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Achieving Realism with High-Quality Assets

Learn to Achieve Realism with Cinema 4D

In this tutorial, we're going to look at the high-quality assets available for you to use. Follow along for more on how to achieve realism with those assets!

In this article, you'll learn:

In addition to the video, we've created a custom PDF with these tips so you never have to search for answers. Download the free file below so you can follow along, and for your future reference.

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How to Find High Quality Assets

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A really important aspect of creating high-quality renders is starting from a solid foundation with high-quality assets. This may sound obvious, but I’ve seen so many renders with low resolution textures or low-poly assets when the render isn’t intended to look like that low-poly style.

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If we search for a whale on Turbosquid, we get the above results, ranging from extremely low quality whales all the way through to ones with amazing UV maps and 8K textures, as well as animation sources baked in.

On a paid job, it’s often possible to put a hero asset like this as a line item in the budget. I’m using this whale example because I did this on a project called Immortalys, and the client paid for this model. It actually saved him money, because if I had to go in and animate these whales, and hire someone to model them, it would’ve cost 5-10 times as much.

One of my favorite sites for high-quality models is Kitbash3D. It can be a lot more cost effective to buy assets in packs rather than a la carte. When you buy a pack like this, you get a set of buildings or cars that have a consistent design language, so that saves you from having to scour the internet for a set of models that feel like they belong in the same world.

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These packs feel internally consistent right out of the gate. Another huge plus here too is that you can select your render engine before you download, and that saves you from having to load the maps and reconnect textures, so the ease of use is extremely high as well.

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How to find 3D displacement textures and characters

Another favorite of mine is Real Displacement Textures, and Christoph Schindelar who runs this site is amazing at creating the highest quality 3D scans out in nature, and then converting them into displacement maps. For photorealistic grounds and rock walls—and just nature scenes in general—these are a must-have. Similar to Kitbash3D, these all come with premade Octane setups.

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For characters, nothing beats 3D Scan Store. Every character has been meticulously scanned in and cleaned up, with all the necessary maps created that help them look photoreal. Another great option is AXYZ Design, and they’ve got people with thousands of poses and different outfits for whatever you’d need.

How to make the most out of Megascans

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Next, let’s look at Megascans. At this point, I’m sure you’re noticing a trend that oftentimes the highest quality assets are those that have been 3D scanned. They’re literally pulled in from reality with all the existing uniqueness and imperfections. I love Megascans because you get a lot of bang for your buck. $20 per month gets you tons of credits which include awesome surfaces and 3D scans.

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The import process is insanely easy too. If you download Megascans Bridge, then once you download an asset, you can just hit the Export button and it will seamlessly import into C4D. And if you’ve got Octane selected as the renderer, all the textures will already be setup for Octane.

Discover the joy of PBR materials

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Finally, let’s talk about PBR materials, which stand Physically Based Rendering materials. These are essentially what we were looking at earlier, meaning rather than just going with materials that only have a diffuse map—or maybe a roughness map too—they have everything from a normal to a specular to a displacement map.

They’re set up to look the highest quality and be the most realistic. Poliigon is my go-to site for these materials, but there’s also an amazing site called CC0 Textures that’s totally free.

Unless you're setting out to create something in a low-poly style, having high-quality assets provides you the best foundation for a solid render. While I've recommended a number of great sites that have worked for me, I also recommend reaching out to artists whose work you've enjoyed to see where they found their assets. Then get to creating!

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